Carcanet Press Logo
Quote of the Day
I'm filled with admiration for what you've achieved, and particularly for the hard work and the 'cottage industry' aspect of it.
Fleur Adcock
Order by 16th December to receive books in time for Christmas. Please bear in mind that all orders may be subject to postal delays that are beyond our control.

Collected Poems

Adam Johnson

Edited by Neil Powell

Cover Picture of Collected Poems
10% off
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (144 pages)
(Pub. May 2003)
9781857546378
£12.95 £11.65
  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • When Adam Johnson, a young gay man from Cheshire, arrived in London in 1984, he possessed insatiable curiosity, irresistible charm and unfocused literary ambition; when he died nine years later, he had become one of the most accomplished English poets of his generation. This Collected Poems charts that astonishing transformation. Although slender as Collecteds go, it is compelling as a record of a few short years' serious writing. Johnson's poetic imagination, shaped by his close observation of the natural world, proved no less adept at dealing with the ironies and tragedies of urban life. A love of music, painting and literature - of cultural life in all its forms - is matched by a delight in human relationships: many of his poems are dedicated to lovers and friends, across the dinner table or at journey's end. His celebratory relish for lived experience remains undiminished even in his last poems. This edition is prepared largely from the author's signed typescripts and includes previously unpublished work.
    Adam Johnson
    ADAM JOHNSON was born in 1965, in Stalybridge, Cheshire. In 1984 he moved to London, where he worked for the BBC, a theatre-booking agency and a reference-book publisher. He self-published a small collection of poems, In the Garden, in 1986; later work appeared in magazines, anthologies, and three collections - ... read more
    Neil Powell
    NEIL POWELL was born in London in 1948.  He was educated at Sevenoaks School, where he founded and edited the award-winning magazine Verve and wrote on jazz as a ‘young critic’ for The Daily Telegraph ; and at the University of Warwick, where he read English and American Literature (BA, 1966–9) ... read more
    Awards won by Neil Powell Winner, 2017 East Anglian Writers Book by the Cover Award (Was and Is) Winner, 2017  East Anglian Book Awards (for Poetry)
    (Was and Is)
    Praise for Neil Powell 'Throughout there are poems to and for friends and yet, paradoxically, Powell has the air of an outsider, solitary and watchful.' 

     D A Prince, the North

     ''Neil Powell's Was and Is: Collected Poems gathers together a lifetime of walking, seeing, reading and rhyming the landscapes of eastern England, and in particular the coast of Suffolk. The author's world of friends and books has a wide historical horizon, haunted by literary ghosts from George Crabbe to W.G. Sebald. This is a rich book full of the light of the changing seasons, the rhythms of weather and sea, and the little details of human life that add colour to every corner of these skilful, evocative, and painterly poems.''
    Dr Jeremy Noel-Tod (UEA), Poetry judge of the 2017 East Anglian Book Awards

    'Like ordinary people, poets long to be loved. But all that is necessary is that they should be understood.'
    Roy Fuller
         'His poetry has a rewarding range and depth, though memory and our ambivalent handling of memory is what he is best at. He is an elegiac poet, and in some ways a more valuable poet of loneliness than Larkin. Any younger reader who hasn't yet cottoned on to Powell should find this carefully considered 'Collected' rewarding: his is a quiet insistent voice at the heart of the tradition.'
    John Fuller

    'Neil Powell's poems are lucid, elegant, formal and humane .'
    Peter Scupham
    'An exceptional poet of place, and of the East Anglian coast in particular: Neil Powell's Selected Poems thoroughly defines the peculiar atmospheres of that bleak landscape and seascape...'
    New Statesman
Share this...
The Carcanet Blog We've Moved! read more Books of the Year read more One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more
Find your local bookshop logo
Arts Council Logo
We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
This website ©2000-2024 Carcanet Press Ltd